Review: Rugrats: Adventures in Gameland

I never really watched Rugrats. I don’t think I could relate. I was never a baby. At least, not that I remember. So, it wasn’t the license attached to Rugrats: Adventures in Gameland that drew me to it, but rather that it’s a newly developed NES game. I don’t know babies, but I do know the NES.

For the console version, there is a modern frontend you can play with. It makes the graphics look more in line with the cartoon. Beyond just overlapping the 8-bit backbone, everything is animated in a way you might expect from a modern 2D platformer, complete with background effects like parallax scrolling. However, it’s all built on top of a game made to run on hardware that first hit the market in 1983. That’s how it plays; it’s an NES game.

However, if Rugrats: Adventures in Gameland had released, say, back in 1991 when the cartoon hit the air, we’d probably still be talking about it with an amount of reverence similar to Duck Tales.

Rugrats: Adventures in Gameland (PC, Switch [Reviewed], PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, NES)
Developer: The MIX Games, Wallride
Publisher: The MIX Games, Limited Run Games
Released: September 10, 2024
MSRP: $24.99

So, again, I don’t really know Rugrats. Even as a ‘90s kid, I maybe only saw snippets of the show and never watched an episode. I wouldn’t have been able to match names to the characters. The storyline involves the babies wanting to play a new Reptar video game, but since they’re deadbeat babies without jobs, they can’t afford it. So, they just imagine it instead.

There are six levels to choose from off the start. There’s no suggested order to them, even though there’s not quite equal when it comes to difficulty. However, the babies don’t get new abilities, nor is there a Mega Man-style boss weakness system, so it really doesn’t matter where you go first. They’re all areas around the house, but while they start off in the physical realm where parents dwell, the levels quickly turn into more video-gamey environments.

The gameplay has obvious inspiration from a few different titles, but the most significant is Super Mario Bros. 2. Some enemies can be thrown, and the desert level reeks of Subcon. However, the flow of the game is completely different. It’s not a clone of anything, you just dig up tiles of dirt and pick up enemies. It feels rather distinct.

When I looked at the demo earlier this year, I had some concerns about its inclusion of co-op. The concern was mainly that two of the giant player sprites would take up most of the horizontal limit on an NES, leaving little room for enemies without a great deal of flicker. The developers got rather creative to avoid this. 

There aren’t all that many enemies, for starters. Much of the challenge comes from strategic placement of foes coupled with short but tricky platforming sections. It’s also a rather slow game, using flip-screens to break up segments of levels. Enemies are often typically placed at different heights, which helps avoid taking up more of that precious sprite limit. There is flicker (which is kind of amusing on Switch, though there’s no option to turn it off), but it’s a totally acceptable amount and nowhere near Super Dodgeball territory.

You could also change over to the HD style, which the game actually starts in. Both music and the art can be swapped over. I didn’t like it quite as much in HD. It starts off zoomed in to a 16:9 aspect ratio, which cuts off the top and bottom of the screen. Worse, the backgrounds become fuzzy when zoomed in, while the player characters do not. I’m not sure if this is a Switch problem exclusively, but it’s not pretty. Thankfully, you can zoom to a 4:3 ratio where everything looks better.

I mostly played in 8-bit since I’m old (not 8-bit old). Part of this is because the art style is more readable. You can tell exactly how high each baby will jump and where the edge of a platform is. It’s not that I struggled with the HD graphics. I just love the NES. We’ve established this.

The 8-bit soundtrack is especially good. It’s not that it’s infectiously catchy, like something from Mega Man 2, but it makes good use of a variety of instrumentation effects. Each level has a distinct sound to it, but no tune really feels weaker than the others. The HD versions are fine, but with the added range of sound, it feels kind of flat.

There are three levels of difficulty to choose from, with the default letting you swap between the four playable babies at any time: Tommy, Chuckie, Phil, and Lil. Each one has different stats for lifting and jumping (again, not unlike Mario 2), and if one takes too much damage, you can swap to another to preserve them. That is, however, aside from the highest difficulty where you pick one baby and are stuck with them for the entirety of the level. It’s not as difficult as it sounds, and might be preferable to hearing the pause noise repeatedly. It’s not a bad noise, but it’s one that I’ve heard too many times.

The bosses are also not terribly impressive. Some are reasonable, but others badly needed tuning. Even the final boss, while an interesting concept, isn’t particularly exciting. It’s nothing egregious, but if I had to point to one place in Rugrats: Adventures in Gameland that could use improvement, that’s where my priorities would be.

And you have to understand that Rugrats: Adventures in Gameland is an NES game that adheres to all of the NES restrictions. The HD options are nice; it’s like a modern remaster being released simultaneously. But if you aren’t fond of vintage platformers, then this is going to be a hard sell. It’s a short-ish experience, and it’s not Mega Man.

However, as far as NES games go, Rugrats: Adventures in Gameland is as solid as they come. I said this earlier, but if this came out during the NES’ lifespan, it probably would be well-remembered. Maybe not as well as one of the system’s absolute classics, but at least in the same niche as Little Nemo: Dream Master. Released today, it’s another very curious case of a new licensed game getting released on an old console. That’s already very exciting for me, so the fact that it’s also a well-tuned game is just gravy.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}